Cant beat USSR as Germany

[Jake]

I have put a decent amount of hours into hearts of iron IV. I have only played as Germany very eager to win WW2 as them before i move along to try other factions. But i have lost campaign after campaign every single time when attempting to invade the USSR. I am proably on my 7th playthrough and still and incapable of breaking the frontlines.... Like i cant even get 1 little territory every time i attack it says im winning at first and says the battle will last less than a day. 10 seconds later is says im losing and the battle will last 100 days. I would really appriciate some advice ! Thank you for reading this and helping out!!

[YolkOnYou]

What are your division compositions? When are you attacking (Don't attack near 1941, they're too strong then. I prefer 1939.)? What tactics do you use? What is the makeup of your army?

[Dimitriy]

Make Sure you take out Western Europe before Declaring On USSR. If America Joins Allies restart for obvious reasons. While im doing that, i do my best to turn all of the baltik states to axis. Also befriend turkey and northern countries. Those will open several fronts for Stalin to worry about. Then, once you haVE 150+ divs you can Attack.

PS: Make Sure Infrastructure is good
Russia likes to spam infantry so motorized rocket artillery ABSOLUTELY DESTROYS anything (3 mil casualties within first month) lol?
If all else fails (it shouldnt) remember that the ai is autistic so just land paratroopers in all their cities to make them capitulate.

Hope this helps :)

[YolkOnYou]

Originally posted by Azov Battalion:

Make Sure you take out Western Europe before Declaring On USSR. If America Joins Allies restart for obvious reasons. While im doing that, i do my best to turn all of the baltik states to axis. Also befriend turkey and northern countries. Those will open several fronts for Stalin to worry about. Then, once you haVE 150+ divs you can Attack.

PS: Make Sure Infrastructure is good
Russia likes to spam infantry so motorized rocket artillery ABSOLUTELY DESTROYS anything (3 mil casualties within first month) lol?
If all else fails (it shouldnt) remember that the ai is autistic so just land paratroopers in all their cities to make them capitulate.

Hope this helps :)

I don't like inviting people to my faction as they tend to do stupid ♥♥♥♥ (like try to puppet USSR). The troop contribution isn't worth it. I usually just steamroll Romania/Poland/Czechs/Yugoslavia/Bulgaria/Turkey.

EDIT: And I'll try that thing with the rocket artillery. Care to tell me the division layout used with it?

[Frozenkhan]

Erwin rommel

[Saxon]

Russia is by far the scariest fight. After 1941 it will look very grim as the war starts out due to the sheer number of Soviet divisions, but it will quickly get better. But only because the AI is dumb. The red army is MASSIVE, and the AI has the idiotic tendency to keep shuffling troops around at the slightest change of numbers on your side of the frontline. I cringe when I watch what little tank divisions they have drive back and forth over mountains, swamps and other horror-terrain that gives them mad attrition problems. They will destroy their own equipment faster than your combined army ever could. And what little fresh troops they will have left will continue to throw themselves at your lines until they are so weak they will remain passive. All you have to do is hold the line and watch them bleed equipment until most of their divisions are half-strength or less. At that point your fresh troops can keep many times their number under control. But they will only stay fresh if you manage your supply carefully. Don't make the mistake of placing too many units in an area or they WILL be worn down the same way as the AI. If you allow it to become a war of attrition you aren't going to win against the Soviets. Always remember that unlike equipment they can replace manpower almost indefinately.

Once they are on the defensive keep pushing or they will just keep cranking out new divisions. Or even worse: produce equipment to increase the strength of the divisions they already have. Use your fast divisions to overrun them as they retreat instead of bleeding manpower. By the time you take Moscow, Leningrad, Sevastopol and Stalingrad you should be pretty far towards victory, but you will have to push just a little bit further East. But at that point they will have very little left to fight you with. I cheesed it a bit by taking the last two cities with paratroopers which the AI doesn't know what to do against.

The game kinda stops being fun after this because after the peace conference when you beat the Comintern you will have such an overwhelming advantage that it will feel like mopping up the rest.

[William]

1) Have at least 150 units total lined up on the border

2) Charge in every direction, set armies to take leningrad, moscow and stalingrad

3) invade before june 1940 or they're too strong

4) Involve Japan, ideally after the Sino Japanese war is over

5) if attacking after 1940, gain allies and attack from at least 3 fronts or it's not gonna work

6) Spam paratroopers and Naval Invasions. You want to spread them as thin as possible

7) Be Patient. They take time. It once took me 11 years to beat them, with millions in casualties. They're hard ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, don't expect them to be like poland or france.

[Andy]

In HOI3, Russia were terrible. They're now OP. If you try and follow a reletivly normal timeline Russia can have 1000 divisions. And thier infantry aren't that far behind at all the German.
There are some serious balance issues in the current build.
My first play through as Germany i thought i'd done a good job getting 175 divisions (including 25 panzer, and 6 airbourne), but Italy put out 187 and Russia was estimated somewhere between about 890 - 1080

Might be worth trying to start a coup and invading after that. But tbh, i think i'll save my next German playthrough untill after a patch.

[Infinity II]

Attacking UDSSR as early as possible worked best for me in all of my three attempts so far.

They have a huge army yes, but lack equipment and suffer from The Purge early on. Also they will have a low unity of around 50%. So you don't need to conquer 80% of their land until they capitulate which is just frustrating... trust me

What worked pretty well for me:

1. Phase - Poland
- Declar war on Poland as early as possible
- With your starting troops it is really easy to overrun them if you use at least two separate armies. One should attack from north, the other one from west
- Make sure to use your best generals for your attack so that they start leveling. I prefer this one guy who has a bonus for fighting in winter and the other one where his troops suffer less from supply issues. Both are very important for your later invasion of UDSSR
- Research everything which boosts research, construction and infantry + support first
- Focus on everything which gives you extra factories, extra research slot and Anschluss first
- Build only military factories
- Don't stop producing tank and infantry divisions. But keep a balance with your daily production / stock, avoid overextension
- Deploying troops earlier for getting Anschluss is worth it, but not necessary before conquering Poland

2. Phase - Prepare
- You should have enough points to change your main infantry template now. I use 7 Inf + 2 Art as my standard + Recon, Logistics, Engineers, Field Hospital and Art as support
- Tanks I don't change at the beginning but add the same support as for my infantry division
- Train troops if they are not fully trained. To save equipment, put them in a separate army
- Take your general with the winter bonus and create 24 divisions army with your most skilled troops. Give this army a small front and attack plan in direction to stalingrad. This army will be used to push into the south and conquer most of the victory points and resources
- Create another army with your logistics general for the north and attack direction to Leningrad
- Create a big army with your best Field Marshall and minimum 40+ division to hold the center and to advance to moscow
- Anschluss should be finished
- You should have two light tank armies with around 3 - 6 divisions, the more the better. Use Guderian and Rommel as commanders
- Planes and navy aren't needed in this war so cut down their production to feed your infantry and tank divisions. They will need every single bullet

3. Phase - UDSSR
- In the first months I let my south army do most of the pushes and use my tanks to encircle enemies in the center and advance when there is a good opening
- Every new infnatry division should go into the center army
- The front lines of the center army should overlap with the other two on your wings. Keep in mind that your wings are the smaller armies and can't keep a huge front. Use your center to compensate if necessary
- Using rivers as defensive lines is very efficient. Attacking into a full entranched enemy OVER a river should be avoided. However if you see an easy opening use it
- Don't attack into swamp if you can avoid it
- When your southern army is close to crim / sevastopol try to get one of your tank armies there. In one of my sessions I was able to break through the enemy lines, overruned the whole penisula and advanced to the other side to open a second front with my tanks. I was not able to advance very far but the AI was forced to move troops from other fronts which made it possible to cut of everything south of stalingrad with my southern army and crushing around at least 30 to 50 divisions. After that the enemy had not enough troops anymore and was falling back constantly on all fronts


PS: Yes this worked without italy or another facist as ally.

[p2]

well ur pretty s**** on my first game i won against soviet

[Mikey]

Build up lvl 10 forts all along the front, might want to nuke hungary/romania to get their parts of the front as well. Ohh and grab all of czechoslovakia without releasing slovakia so you dont get trouble with that as well.

What you want to do is defend for a couple years. They will lose a ton of manpower trying to assault your line and fail. Once you get to around 3-4m losses on their side you are good to go and the war will basicly be won.

[☢ ☣ Dtokz ツ +++]

Its pretty easy, i personally group up "panzer gruppes" and they will have about 8-15 divisons i will try to have 3. Each one is dedicated to smashing the front. with this build you and your 6000 panzers should arrive at moscow after around 10 months of fighting you will most likely still be near full strength too . HOI4 atm is a really ♥♥♥♥ game because of so many reasons the main one being AI is no challenge. GL

[YolkOnYou]

Originally posted by ☢ ☣ Koersive + + + ツ:

Its pretty easy, i personally group up "panzer gruppes" and they will have about 8-15 divisons i will try to have 3. Each one is dedicated to smashing the front. with this build you and your 6000 panzers should arrive at moscow after around 10 months of fighting you will most likely still be near full strength too . HOI4 atm is a really ♥♥♥♥ game because of so many reasons the main one being AI is no challenge. GL

I usually just bring ~170 infanterie divisions and ~30 tanks at around 1940. Took me around three months.

[thorha]

You want an easy tip?

Right, here we go:

1) Build tank and motorized divisions, preferably medium tanks, in the ratio of at least 1:4 to plain inf

2) Group said mobiles into korps (3 to 4 divs) or even armies (6 to 8 divs)

3) Execute a general offensive order with your main inf army, move all of your mobiles manually

4) Look for weak spots in the enemy line, move your tanks through there. Do it staggered (means 1 korps attacks today, the next one in 3 days) in order to catch the defending AI moving troops in the wrong direction

4) Once a breakthrough has been acheived, aim for wide encirclements. Wide as in minimum 3 provinces deep and 5 to 8 long. Look if the AI main army follows up, if not, split one division to close gaps and move on

Correctly executed you can have pockets of up to 200 divisions in the first 3 months of the campaign. Do the mop up of these pockets manually commanding parts of the AI led army (they return to maijn order oin their own), otherwise your main army gets stuck surrounding the pockets. But KEEP THE MOBILES MOVING.

It helps tremenduously if
- main inf army has some mobile elements (small brigade size divisions with a front width of 10 = 5 bataillons)
- all army divisions have logistics company attachments to help with supply

Normally something between 100 and 200 divisions of plain inf are supplied by your allies (Hungary, Romania etc.). And different to RL these divisions are well equipped as the AI (all AIs) never fails to research the relevant infantry techs in due time. Assign these to your main inf army and don´t forget to assign them to the front line as well. Don´t bother with planning/frontlines for the mobile force - not worth the time and during campaign a pain in the ass (frontlines get longer and longer for your relatively small mobile force).

The full concept is called "Blitzkrieg" and was actually employed by the German army in WW 2 :-).

Regards,
Thorsten

[Revan1977]

Originally posted by ☢ ☣ Koersive + + + ツ:

Its pretty easy, i personally group up "panzer gruppes" and they will have about 8-15 divisons i will try to have 3. Each one is dedicated to smashing the front. with this build you and your 6000 panzers should arrive at moscow after around 10 months of fighting you will most likely still be near full strength too . HOI4 atm is a really ♥♥♥♥ game because of so many reasons the main one being AI is no challenge. GL

I just started playing this a few days ago. I keep running into the problem of a handful of Ai divisions holding out against huge armies. Several armies in fact. 5-6 divisions should not be able to hold out against 40-50, for months or years at a time. Ai might be ♥♥♥♥ as you say, but something is broke here.

[[e-mail]]

Lol there are alot of noobs on this post hahaha, beating soviets is easy no matter the date. If you go infantry, get 120-150 7inf+2art divisions and make sure at the start of campaign to switch to superior firepower doctrine. If you want you can all mechanized, last time for fun i made light tank+ motorized divisions only, no infantry at all. I dont remember how many divisions i had, must have been around 80. I steamrolled russia and lost 200k people total. If you like to take your time you can also wait for late 1941 and research 41' medium tanks + mechanized infantry and make divisions of that only. I did too and won against soviets with 50k losses total i wouldve lost less but i was bored at the end and sent infantry in turkey where soviets had some troops in the mountains. So if you can beat the soviets, kill 10 millions of them while losing 50k... don't tell me soviets are strong haha. Oh and my 3rd game ever on hoi4 i played germany on veteran and still won without any trouble, 7inf+2art with superior firepower is too OP makes all games hyper easy.